


Sense of... Olfaction

by Epiphanyx7



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-30
Updated: 2009-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:09:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epiphanyx7/pseuds/Epiphanyx7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just that with his nose stuffed up with cotton, breathing exclusively through his mouth, the meal in front of him tasted like Teyla's grain-paste porridge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sense of... Olfaction

**Author's Note:**

> [[Written for Cliché Bingo 2009. Cliché: Sensory Deprivation ]] Do YOU hate the Bailey's commercials as much as I do? Sense of... excitement! Sense of... adventure! Sense of... Vestibular Motion!

He'd never really thought that he'd miss his sense of smell - but then again, he'd never had to live without it before. Ronon frowned down at his meal, which he happened to know was tasty. It's just that with his nose stuffed up with cotton, breathing exclusively through his mouth, the meal in front of him tasted like Teyla's grain-paste porridge.

If he were honest with himself, though, Ronon would admit that in his condition pretty much everything tasted like Teyla's porridge - which is to say, it was bland, tasteless to the point of being nauseating, and almost impossible to force himself to eat. Fortunately, the texture was at least bearable, so he forced himself to eat another bite.

And then he gave up and drank some tea. At least it was _supposed_ to taste bland.

-

He wanted to go outside and inhale deeply, fill his lungs with the heavy damp scent of rain-covered earth, of thick vegetation and barely-discernible wood smoke. Instead, Ronon had to make do with going to the infirmary and have a nurse prod unhelpfully at his nose.

After the explosion, his ears had stopped ringing after a few hours. He'd been seeing spots for days, even, but the damage to his lungs -- breathing in all the smoke and heat -- had been more extensive. It probably hadn't helped that he'd been in there the longest, dragging the scientists out of the lab and then going back to find whoever had been squished under their work.

By the time he'd made it to the infirmary himself, Ronon had been almost unconscious, his dreadlocks singed and his eyelashes burnt off. He hadn't smelled anything - not a single thing - since.

"How you doing, big guy?" And it's one of the marines, here to check up on him or possibly to ask him for his autograph.

"Fine," Ronon grunts, and then he turns to leave. He needs to go -- be somewhere else.

-

He misses the smell of baking bread, the overpowering scent of McKay's coffeepot as the scientist scurried about the morning, looking harried and sleep-deprived in the morning. It's not something Ronon had actually paid attention to, generally speaking, but his sense of smell was incredibly important. He could tell when it was due to rain, not just by the changes in air pressure, but by the way it smelled as if the sky was going to open up.

Ronon could smell anger and tension in a room, could tell when the muffins in the oven were ready to come out, could even tell when the stress was getting to Teyla. He could tell Jennifer's moods by the perfume she wore, could recognize the marines with his eyes closed because of the way they each had a slightly different scent, gun oil and sweat and grit and just a little bit of their homes, as well.

And without it, being completely nose-dead, it was driving him insane. He felt disoriented all the time, as if his head was full of cotton or his balance was off, because there was something missing about every single day, every single moment, and once he realized wht it was it was impossible to forget. Ronon needed to be able to smell, needed to be able to recognize the scent of electricity in the air, the damp, earthy smell of a swamp that the team could hide in.

-

"You okay?" McKay asked, looking like hell. He was holding a cup of coffee.

Ronon inhaled deeply, relief curling in his cut when he realized that underneath the nothing, there was a faint coffee-smell, as if it were several rooms away and several hours old, but there nonetheless. His sense of smell was returning.

"Yeah," He said. "I'm okay."

McKay shrugged and then moved on.

-


End file.
